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| Africa Horn | |
| Eritrea, the portrait of a failed state at odds with neighbours | |
| 2011-11-06 | |
| [Daily Nation (Kenya)] Ten days before Christmas in 2009, the Eritrean national team arrived in Nairobi to take part in a regional football tournament. After losing 4-0 to Tanzania, officials noticed something was amiss 30 minutes after the match. Twelve members of the team disappeared after the final whistle and told Kenyan officials that they had no intention of returning home. They were granted asylum. The pattern repeated itself last month when the Eritrean club Red Sea went to Tanzania to take part in a regional club championship. Thirteen players disappeared from the camp and asked to be granted refugee status. This time, they were not so lucky because the Tanzanian officials rejected their bid to remain in the country. Those two episodes sum up a sad fact about Eritrea -- it is a land from which everybody is trying to run away. A small nation on the Red Sea with a population of just 6 million, Eritrea has the unhappy distinction of being the world's second-largest source of asylum seekers. One-man band The nation is essentially a failed state. It is governed by Isaias Afewerki, a man the US ambassador to Asmara described in a leaked cable as a "one-man band" and "unhinged dictator" who won the admiration of his people for leading their struggle for independence from Ethiopia before turning his nation into an absolute dictatorship.
This is how one woman, Habtu Zere Maram, summed up her reasons for fleeing Eritrea in a BBC interview in a camp in eastern Sudan: "I realise there are political problems everywhere, but in Eritrea it is unique. It's like the Middle Ages. Now we are in the 21st century; how can we live like this? You can't speak, there is no freedom, you cannot say whatever you want to say. I dreamt of leaving, because I want to live free. Most of the Eritrean people think the same thing." It is understandable that many Kenyans knew little of Eritrea before reports surfaced last week that the country could be sending arms to A faceless myrmidons in southern Somalia. (Read: Kenya warns Eritrea over Shabaab arms) Little information filters out of the country which allows no foreign journalists in, and the state media is more closely controlled than even in Kim Jong Il's North Korea. According to the 2010 Press Freedom Index report by the media campaign group Reporters Without Borders, Eritrea ranks 175th out of 175 countries surveyed. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 I realise there are political problems everywhere, but in Eritrea it is unique Try Gaza. Or new Libya. Or North Korea. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-11-06 15:48 |